


Walk Away

by fabricdragon



Series: Smooth Criminal [8]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alice in Wonderland References, Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Bad Parenting, Canon-Typical Violence, Catatonic, Child Abuse, Dark Mycroft, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Education, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Fae & Fairies, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Lewis Carrol, M/M, Mathematics, Origin Story, Past Suicide, Pre-Canon, Psychological Trauma, Rape/Non-con Elements, Sex trafficking references, Unreliable Narrator, Victim Blaming, mising persons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-16
Updated: 2017-03-12
Packaged: 2018-09-24 21:01:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 11,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9786890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fabricdragon/pseuds/fabricdragon
Summary: How Jim Moriarty met Mycroft Holmes, which was generally a terrible idea.Begins just after the murder of Carl Powers.TW: just about all of  them. Jim's childhood and early adulthood was horrible.Read this for information about how Moriarty became what he is, and what he's talking about in the main stories, and for what happened between Mycroft and Moriarty (and you know they both survive this) but seriously, you don't think a GOOD relationship led to what happened?





	1. Discovery

The boy who would one day be known as Jim Moriarty was delighted:  _Carl was dead, and no one suspected anything_.  Jim went on with his classes, ignoring the taunts of the other boys, the casual shoves in the hallways.  He’d gotten rid of Carl; he’d get rid of them, too. He was a changeling, after all, hadn’t his mother said so?

It was a month later that the ginger showed up.  He was rich, richer than most at school– you could tell from his clothes, and even more from the bodyguard/driver. He acted like he was in charge, but he was hardly more than another kid. Jim ducked him by reflex.  Long experience told him that older kids just meant bullies who could hurt you worse.

For some reason the damn ginger rich kid kept… showing up.  He showed up in the back of classes, and he talked to teachers.  It made Jim suspicious.  _The kid had a friendly, bland face, but…_

_But there was something about his eyes._

The third day that kid had been hanging around, he was heading to his favorite spot to be alone, and that damn ginger was there.

He turned to leave and the fellow, in his damn perfect accent, said, “My baby brother solved the murder you know.”

“What murder?” He tried to keep his Irish accent out of his voice, and failed‑ as usual.

“Carl Powers.  Why’d you do it?”

“Carl drowned, on a swim meet,” he said, thinking about how he was going to kill him, or if he should run.

The fellow was a lot taller than Jim and a good bit heavier, with a soft round face and padded body from having all the sweets you ever wanted.  His bodyguard was nowhere to be seen, but he walked up to Jim like… like Jim was helpless.

“Sure he did.” And he was much too close and standing there like the other bullies. Jim knew how this went: he’d be kicked black and blue, or worse.  He swung on the kid‑ just to throw him off so Jim could run‑ and found himself flat down on the ground with an arm twisted behind his back, and the larger, older boy on top of him.

“That was stupid.”

“What other option did I have?” Jim said, laying his head down and going limp.  He wondered idly if he’d get off just with bruises, or what.

“You’re not going to scream?”

“Why bother? No one would believe me anyway, and you’re rich.”

“Yes, that’s true.  Most fellows don’t get that, though.”

“Get it over with.”

A long pause, as Jim’s legs went to sleep from the weight on his back. “This happens a lot?”

“Yes.”

“I suppose that’s why, then.  That you killed him.”

Jim stayed silent.  It might earn him more pain but he wasn’t stupid enough to admit to murder.  They stayed like that for a while.  The older boy shifted his weight onto a sore spot and Jim fought not to hiss.

“What?”

“What? I didn’t say anything.”

“You twitched‑why?”

“Because you’re SITTING on me?”

“No.” The boy rather matter of factly began undoing Jim’s pants.  Jim pressed his face into the grass and started thinking about how to kill him, and whether he’d ever be able to come back here in peace. “Oh, now THAT’s rather spectacular bruises.”  He sounded admiring. “How’d you get those?”

“You’re so smart, you figure it out.” Jim knew better, but he couldn’t help snapping at the fellow.

“Well, you didn’t get them from the students; it’s an adult belt size…. And most teachers don’t leave those kind of marks, really, they either use a switch, or they don’t hit hard enough to bruise. So…?”

“So?”

“So who would hit you with a belt? An adult belt? Hard enough to leave those bruises?”

“You can tell all that and you can’t answer that?”  Jim was beginning to feel  very odd, lying face down in the dirt with his bare ass hanging out while this fellow discussed his bruises.

“No… unless your family…?”

“Just get on with it already.”

“Oh! Oh, I see, you thought I’d bugger you?”  He could hear amusement creep into the voice. “Oh, that explains Carl, I suppose.”  The fellow moved off of him suddenly, leaving Jim to scramble to his feet and pull up his pants.

The fellow had a lollipop and was sucking on it and looking at him curiously. “So your family hits you?”

“My father. He’s all the family I have, now.” He wiped the grass and dirt off as best he could. _He wouldn’t run, they always were on you in a moment if you ran._

“I’m Mycroft.”

“That’s a daft name.”

“Yes, well, family,” he said with a shrug. He went back to sucking on the sweet.

“So now what?”

“I just wanted to know who, and why.  No one but my brother figured it out.”

“You came up here  and stalked me for three days, knocked me down and pulled my pants off, just because you wanted what?!”

“I wanted to know why, and who.  It bothered me, so I had Benjamin drive me up to find out.” Mycroft tilted his head at him. “Is it because you’re smart?”

Jim paused. “Sometimes,” he said slowly, “or my accent, or the fact that I’m small, or any number of other reasons.”

“And you’re poor; I suppose that doesn’t help.”

“No.”

“You’re doing math work way over your level.”

“It’s easy enough.”

Mycroft looked at him thoughtfully. “Your year is studying Tennyson, right?”

Jim couldn’t figure out what his game was but that was common knowledge enough, “Yes, why?”

“Try Browning, you’ll like him better.”

Jim snorted, “I DO like him better, but Lewis Carrol is better.”

Mycroft looked offended, “They aren’t the same thing at all.”

“No. No, they aren’t.”

“Next you’ll tell me you like Tolkein.”

“Tolkein was brilliant.” Jim narrowed his eyes at him.

“Elves.” Mycroft snorted.

Jim cursed him and insulted three generations of his ancestry in Elvish. “It has its uses.”

Mycroft looked at him for a long time. “Did you actually learn that blasted language of his?”

“Yes,” Jim said smugly. “I got bored in French class.”

Mycroft grinned at him. “I don’t know Elvish.” He got into his pocket, pulled out a card wallet, and handed Jim a card: it was heavy and rich and the paper felt like nothing Jim had touched before. “Write me in it. I’ll have learned it by then.”

And he walked off.

Jim stood staring after him for a long time before he looked back down at the card: he’d already smudged the edges with the dirt on his fingers.  It said Mycroft Holmes and had an address and a phone number.

It took him two weeks before he was bored enough to write to him, in Elvish.  When he got a letter back it was a shock; he didn’t get letters.

Except for the salutation and closing, it was in Elvish and the choice of words was a bit odd therefore, but it basically said:

_“James,_

_{I must apologize for my rudeness of our last meeting. Your language skills are excellent, albeit your handwriting is appalling.  If you can slip away from your father, come down to London on your holiday. I’ll let you into the grand library.}_

_Mycroft”_

Jim shook his head. All that, and he learned Elvish… and his handwriting was splendid… and he had no idea about the real world.

He wrote back:

_“Mycroft,_

_{Not all of us are born to nobility and wealth. Travel is beyond my means, even if I could get away from home.}_

_James”_

He then switched to a second paper and went on about some mathematics they were studying.

He got a package just before holiday: it was a textbook of advanced mathematics‑Jim could never have afforded anything like it‑and a train ticket.

He thought about his father, with his belt, and his cigarettes, and he thought about London and Libraries…

And he packed his summer bags and got on the train.


	2. Everything has a cost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TW: shaming over abuse, among other things.

He was met by the driver, Benjamin, at the station, and driven to a neighborhood that looked like television. It was all perfect and rich, and Jim couldn’t quite believe it was real. He was taken to a flat and told to wait inside.

Inside it was all books and luxury. Jim looked around: it was all being treated so casually, it hurt. There was even a computer, but it had a cup and saucer sitting on top of it. He found a bowl of fruit: it was filled with apples. He took one and sat down and waited. He must have fallen asleep eventually, because he woke up at the sound of the door.

“Good,” Mycroft nodded at him. He was stripping off his outerwear and hanging things up.

“Mycroft,” Jim nodded.

“You say ‘Thank you for the book and the train ticket, Mycroft.’ Politeness costs nothing.”

Jim smiled at him, “Of course it costs something. What did you want?”

Mycroft smiled back. “I knew you were smart.” He walked into the kitchen. “Tea?”

“Yes, please.”

“You should have asked what it cost before you came.”

“Probably, but I figured it had to be better than going home.”

“True,” Mycroft nodded. “I’ll only hurt you if you do something wrong.”

“I’m always doing something wrong.”

“Stop believing that. It’s something ordinary people want you to believe so they can hurt you.”

“How do you stop BELIEVING something?” Jim asked him. “People always say things like that, but no one ever tells you how. When you ask them, they don’t even know.” Jim stared fiercely at him. _After all, no one else had ever been able to answer that, except by hitting him and telling him to shut up._

“Oh.” Mycroft looked at him thoughtfully, “Yes, of course, ordinary people… I forget, you don’t have a real family.”

Mycroft walked over to one of the bookshelves and pulled out a book. “Read this, then ask me questions. It explains how.” He handed him the book: De Oratori, by Cicero. Jim opened it and it was in Latin; he could recognize that.

“I’ve never learned Latin.”

“It’s easy, right up until you get to some of the complex verb structures,” Mycroft shrugged. “So after tea, we’ll start you on Latin.”

They did. Mycroft was an impossible taskmaster, enthusiastically explaining things at a pace where Jim could barely keep up–it was dizzying. They worked right through dinner.

“I’m sorry.” Jim hung his head the second time he’d had to stop Mycroft and ask him a question. Mycroft had just looked at him pityingly and explained.

“You’re not STUPID, Jim. You’re probably almost as bright as my brother.” Mycroft looked thoughtful. “Actually, you might be smarter; we just started with a better education.” He shrugged, “You’re not me, of course.”

“I never…”

Mycroft grinned, “Met anyone smarter than you? No, how would you? They’re goldfish.”

“Goldfish?”

Mycroft made fish mouth gestures and puffed his cheeks out, looking utterly stupid. Jim laughed.

“Well, you get the couch. Its horribly uncomfortable, I’m afraid.”

Jim startled. “Are you going to tell me what you want? I thought…”

“Oh, you’re pretty, Jim,” Mycroft shrugged and walked over, looking down at him and smiling. “But you still have their hands all over you.” He made a face. “You’re dirty.”

Jim flinched. _Yes, yes of course I am._

“Let’s see if we can get you cleaned up. Once I teach you Latin and Greek, and some other basics, well… we’ll see.” Mycroft shrugged and went to bed.

The rest of that summer was brutal in ways he never imagined. Mycroft expected him to read and complete exercises by the time he got home, and then discuss them as if he’d been studying for life. After two weeks, Mycroft would only speak to him in Latin or Greek. Jim would sooner have been beaten black and blue than face another curled-lip look of disgust from him. _His very rare smiles, though: those were worth it._

“Oh,” Mycroft said as he packed him back to the train. “I’ve hired you a bodyguard instructor.”

“What?”

“I hired you a bodyguard. He won’t be there all the time; his main job is to teach you to fight.”

“Teach me…?” Jim ducked his head, “I’m sorry, Mycroft, I don’t understand.”

“I don’t want other people touching my things.” Mycroft shrugged. “And if I ever do decide I want you that way–well then, no one ELSE gets to touch you.” He sighed. “At any rate, you’re better than goldfish.”

He went back to school and it was worse than ever. After being with Mycroft–after being pushed to actually excel, to exceed his limits–the classes were slower than ever. Mycroft sent him books: they were all that kept him sane.

That, and the combat instruction.

The man looked unassuming enough, but something about the way he moved was like a coiled spring, and he never made any noise when he walked, not even in the hallways. Jim was pulled out of sports and exercise to take classes with him, and the first week he spent in agony from being thrown into mats that felt like concrete.

“You have to learn to take it,” the man–he had told Jim to call him Sir, but he’d heard a teacher call him Mr. Black–said amusedly at him. “To fall so you minimize damage, to move with the blow.” He smirked, “At least you don’t cry… much.”

Jim wiped the teardrops from his eyes. “I’ve had worse.”

“Again.”

A month into school, and the usual gang cornered him and beat him to the ground. They took turns, and when they were done his insides felt raw and he was bleeding. They left him there and ran off.

“I see why you need training,” Mr. Black said, casually helping him up.

“Yes,” Jim answered, pulling himself together as best he could.

Later that day, Black changed the class to stretching and something he called physical therapy. “It will help you recover faster.”

Jim just nodded.

“Why don’t you ask me?” he asked him, at the end of class.

“Ask you what?”

“Why I didn’t step in?”

Jim stared at him. “Why would you?”

Mr. Black looked back at him uneasily. “Most people would expect me to rescue them.”

“Most people are idiots. It’s kind enough that Mycroft is having you teach me. No one’s going to rescue me. If I can’t take care of myself, I must deserve it.”

Black rocked back on his heels slightly. “You’re an odd fish.”

Jim heard him on the phone once, that year, asking if he was “another brother, Mr. Holmes?” Jim smiled and flushed.

By the end of the school year, Jim had started putting the method of loci, or mind palace, into practice. It was hard to start, but it got easier the more he practiced.

He wasn’t certain if he built more muscle from the training or from the books he was carrying. The bullies’ beatings started hurting less, as he learned to fall and move with the blows, and they didn’t often get as far.

It was only when summer started again, and he had to go home, that he wondered why he hadn’t been sent home for the breaks. His father might have been in jail, he supposed. He went home to find his father passed out drunk in a living room that was worse than usual. Jim started cleaning up and found that someone had been sending cases of cheap liquor to his father all year. Jim smiled. _That was why I hadn’t been bothered._

His father only had time to add a handful of burns to his collection before the train ticket came. Since it came the day after a case of whiskey, he simply slipped out while his father was still passed out.

Mycroft just curled his lip at him when he saw him. “You let those people touch you?”

“I didn’t let them,” he said defensively.

“You’re lucky I like having someone to talk to, or I wouldn’t bother with you.”

He felt like he was being knifed. “Yes, Mycroft, thank you. It’s… It’s helped.”

“Go clean up. There’s a math lecture tomorrow: I’m taking you.”

Jim’s eyes lit up. “Thank you,” he said with rather more enthusiasm.

Mycroft nodded, “Go shower and bring me my tea.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> repeat after me, yes this is a much nicer and better place than Jim's home. that's why he doesnt realize how much abuse he is still suffering. this is still a VERY bad situation and getting worse.
> 
> De Oritorio by Cicero has a description of the "Mind Palace" technique, yes


	3. Battle Scars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> more about Jim's dad, and yes it's bad

Mycroft expected instant and complete obedience, but seemed to relish the few times Jim managed to keep up with him on any of the intellectual arguments. It was a shock to find that Jim actually seemed to have a better grasp on mathematics than Mycroft.  It wasn’t obvious at first, since Mycroft was almost  seven years older, and had so much more education, but by the end of summer…

“I… I didn’t get that,”  Mycroft whispered, as they had been debating one of the new mathematics theorems.

Jim froze.  “I’m sorry,” he said hurriedly.

“Never apologize for being smarter or better‑ only apologize for mistakes,” Mycroft said with a snarl. “You aren’t one of THEM– don’t pretend to be.”

Jim looked up hesitantly, “You aren’t angry?” _I’m not one of them, my mother said so, even my father knew._

“I’m furious,” Mycroft said firmly. “But I didn’t spend all this time trying to bring you up out of the muck to shove you back into it.”

Jim just looked at him for a long time, trying to figure out what to do.

Mycroft nodded, slowly. “You need out of that idiot school.”

“Yes?”

“You’re too young, still, to be on your own, even with a court order, but you could go to University. I did. I started at your age.”

Jim blinked.  Mycroft was in University now, but he’d thought perhaps he’d just started a bit young. “At MY age? Wouldn’t you be done then?”

“I’m getting my PhD,” Mycroft said staring at him. “Didn’t you ever wonder what I was doing?”

“Yes. If you wanted me to know, you’d tell me.”

Mycroft smiled. “Come here.”

Jim did.  Mycroft reached out and touched him, for the first time since that day they’d met, other than fingertips across a book, or a tea cup. He pushed Jim’s hair back and Jim shivered.

“I’ll get you admitted to King’s Crossing.  You’ll just be across town from me.”

“I can’t…” _afford it._ Jim knew he only went to the school he went to from scholarships.

“I’ll introduce you to their Math Head.  You won’t have to worry.”

“How do you know so many people?” Jim asked, finally, hoping Mycroft would touch him again.

“I’m a Holmes: my family’s been advisors to King, or Queen, and Country since forever.” He smiled. “Besides, that paper we were discussing?”

“Yes?”

“Go look at the author’s names.”

Jim did.  There were three names on the attribution, one of them a woman. “Yes?”

“Mummy.  She publishes under her maiden name.”

Jim sank down on the chair. “Your… mother? Wrote THIS?”

“Yes,” Mycroft nodded. “The other name there? That’s the head of the Math College at King’s.  Anyone who can follow one of Mum’s papers?  You’re already in.”

He’d dragged him across town and introduced him the next day, then left him.  Jim was hesitant at first, but the old man’s enthusiasm soon caught up with him, and the day went by in chalk dust and papers.

“Of COURSE he’s coming to King’s!” the professor had said when Mycroft showed up to collect him.

“He’s thirteen, poor, and his father’s a drunk,” Mycroft said casually.  “You figure out how to manage it. Come on, Jim, I told you you were in.”

Jim looked back wistfully and then returned his attention to Mycroft. “That… that was wonderful.”

Mycroft nodded. “Mathematics isn’t my thing, it’s Mummy’s.”

“What’s your thing, then?”

“People, politics. I’m going to run this country in a few years.”

Jim nodded. He could believe it.

“And I’ll want you.”

“Me?”

“You.  People like you. Killers, but not the dumb ones.  The dumb ones are awful.  My great-grandfather knew how useful they are.”

“I’m not that good at it. Not everyone leaves a perfect opportunity lying around.”

“Then you make an opportunity.” Mycroft shrugged. “That’s what Mr. Black does.”

“Kill people?”

“Yes. Someday I’ll explain, but he’s… retired.” Mycroft shrugged. “My family ends up with a lot of people from that department.”

“Like Benjamin?”

Mycroft smiled, “Like Benjamin.”

“And me?”

“No.  You’re mine. You’re smarter than they are, you’d be wasted on them.  You’ll be my personal killer.”

Jim thought about it for a while. “Alright. I don’t think I know enough.”

Mycroft just smiled. “I’ll teach you, and Black will teach you, but, honestly, from everything I’ve heard? Half the trouble is just being willing to do it, and not hesitate.”

Jim focused on his studies with Mr. Black, turning as much attention as he could spare to his lessons with him. Black seemed to approve‑ at least he liked the fact that Jim never quit and never expected favors.

After he was back at school that year‑ fourteen years old, and still smaller than everyone‑ he saw Mr. Black take off his shirt after a workout. There were small circular dots all across his chest and stomach.  Some of them looked familiar.

“Who put out cigarettes on YOU? I wouldn’t think they could!”

Black blinked at him a lot and finished wiping off sweat. “I was injured and they tried to interrogate me.”

“Oh? They wanted you to answer questions?  Did they think that would work? Why?”

“Most people are afraid of pain,” he said slowly.

“It’s better avoided,” Jim said drily, “but I don’t see why anyone would think you’d say anything unless you wanted to.”

“You never know what you’ll do until people hurt you,” Black said, sounding angry for some reason.

Jim shrugged. Black seemed to have gotten unreasonably angry.

“People who haven’t been trained will say anything to stop it from hurting,” Black growled.

Jim just shrugged. “Well, most people are stupid, so I suppose.”

“Even a genius has physical limits, boy.”

“Well, yes, but…”

Black had lit a cigarette. He walked over and waved it at him. “And you think that if I put this out in your skin, you could take it?”

Jim just shrugged, “Naturally.”

“You’re wrong, you know.”

Jim debated apologizing, but he wasn’t wrong. “I’m not wrong.”

Black snorted. “Hold out your arm.”

Jim did.  Black made threatening motions with the cigarette, getting it close enough that Jim could feel the heat against his skin.  He didn’t move.

 _Black looked… confused_ , Jim finally decided, as he pulled the cigarette back. “Never been burned, then? Don’t know how bad it hurts?”  He asked.

Jim suddenly understood, and laughed.  He pulled off his undershirt, revealing scars that rivaled the older man’s in number. “I don’t think it’s anything new, no.”

Much to his surprise, Black recoiled. “God!”

“What?” Jim asked, puzzled, as he put his shirt back on.

“Those kids…?”

“My father.” Jim shrugged. “Why do you think I run away to London every chance I get?”

“I had no idea,” he said slowly. “You know, the government‑“

“Can take me away from him? They took my sister, after mother died.”  Jim went and got a bottle of juice‑ it had been a rough workout. “I have no idea where she is now.  I have no interest in ending up in foster care, probably going to a worse school than this one, and ending up being shoved into the army‑ or worse, menial work.” He drained the bottle.

After that Black stepped up his training.

Which is probably why he lived, when his father found out he was leaving to go to University.

 


	4. Volatile Mixes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If i need to remind you, TW!

His father, on finding out that he was going to leave– getting a scholarship not just to a nearby boarding school, but to a London University– exploded.

Jim was an ungrateful bastard, a disobedient wretch, a faggot, and a disgrace.

Jim felt something within him stretch and unsheathe his claws, as he hadn’t in years, not since his father had beaten him unconscious for backtalk when he was a child.

“Perhaps if you were less interested in my ass, you wouldn’t care so much about my being a faggot.” Jim said slowly, carefully.  His father had screamed at him about taking on airs, and thinking himself worth going to London… and struck him.

Jim had rolled with it, it was instinct now.  He would forever curse himself for not following up with a leg sweep, or a strike, but it had been beaten into him since he was young to just roll over and take it, to never strike back.  His father saw him roll back and get up, unharmed… This time his father picked up a spanner and swung.

It was Black’s training that had him block the shot that would have crushed his skull.  It was the practice at yielding that saved his life, but the sickening snap, and the sight of blood on his sweater, followed in any case.

His father stared at the bone protruding from his son’s sweater, and the blood, and stopped to throw up.

Jim looked at it, and felt the nausea and the pain, and gritted his teeth with the soul certainty of an abuse victim that no one was going to save him, and walked to the phone.

“Yes, ambulance.” He gave the address. “Compound fracture.  It’s bad.”

“What are you…?” his father gasped at him as he hung up the phone.

 _What mother always called me: a changeling–faerie childe–, what she called my sister, before she died_. Jim shrugged, which was a mistake– it almost made him black out. “I’m your son, unfortunately.” Jim stared at him as though he was seeing him for the first time. Drunk he’d always known.  Whatever kindness there had been in him had gone away when his mother committed suicide after the birth of his little sister, but suddenly he could see him:  see the way he’d been bent, broken, by all the stupid bullies, all the abuse wielded like an ax‑just like he did.

“If you ever touch me again,” Jim said calmly, and he did feel calm, “I will break your arm, and then your leg, and then your neck.” He looked at him and saw what he could have turned into, if Mycroft hadn’t pulled him up out of the muck. “And out of courtesy, Father dear, after that I’d kill you.”

He didn’t pass out until the ambulance picked him up.

They tried to get him to testify about what happened. All he would say, after the surgery to repair his arm, and the pin, and the ache in his arm that would plague him when the weather turned for the rest of his life, was, “It was an accident.”

He went back home, and told his father to pack his things, watching him as he put everything into boxes and bags, and he left for London.

Mycroft was waiting for him. “Does it hurt?” he asked as they got into the car. Jim nodding at Benjamin before the divider went up.

“Yes.”

“Worse than burns?”

“Oh, yes.  It doesn’t really stop, you know.  It just aches, with a sort of steady nausea, even through the drugs, and the drugs make me feel stupid.”

“You’re… braver than I thought, you know,”  Mycroft said, hesitantly.  Jim beamed.

Mycroft put an arm around Jim’s shoulder. Jim almost cried, because Mycroft hardly ever touched him.  He carefully pulled Jim up to his chest, and tucked Jim’s head under his chin. Jim almost held his breath, but eventually, slowly, relaxed into Mycroft’s arm, falling asleep as Mycroft stroked his hair.

~

“It’s not even the middle of the school year,” Mycroft said a few days later. “But my brother’s gotten himself into more trouble. I have to go home on a visit.”

“The brother that figured out the murder?”

“How do you know I have another one?”

“You didn’t deny it.”

Mycroft smiled, “As it happens, yes.  My baby brother– he’s your age, but… Anyway, I asked Black to come help with your recovery while I’m gone.”

“Thank you, Mycroft.”

“You can work on math, too. No excuses with your arm.”  Mycroft nodded at him, packed his bags, and left.  Black moved in the same day. He seemed rather familiar with recovering after a bad break, and started to teach Jim pain management techniques. Most of them were child’s play really, after studying the method of loci and other mental disciplines Mycroft had insisted he learn.

~

When Mycroft came back after a week, he was closed off, tight, angry…   _hurt_.

Jim didn’t know what to do about it, so he asked Mycroft to explain more about politics, and listened as he talked; it seemed to help.

After several days, some of the story came out: apparently, his brother had gotten drunk, or high, or something.  Mycroft seemed tired. “He’s not as strong as I am.” He said. “He gets overwhelmed, or bored, and he does crazy things.  I hope he goes back to blowing things up.”

“Blowing things up?” Jim asked.

“Yes.  I suppose we all did that as kids,” Mycroft shrugged.

“I never did, what would I blow up? I mean, I set things on fire Guy Fawkes Day, but that’s about it.”

“You… never…?”

Jim shook his head. Mycroft grinned, and taught him how to make the most fascinating explosives from ordinary things.  They were still looking it over when Black came in for his class.

“Mr. Holmes?” he said looking warily at the counter.

“Explosives class,” Mycroft said, measuring things. “Do you know Jim has never made explosives?”

“Most people don’t,” Black said, still looking a bit worried at the chemicals out on the counter.

“Most ordinary people, you mean.” Mycroft smiled. “No one here is ordinary.”

“I’m… trained.  To handle this. Sir.”  Black bit out the words.

“So? Then, if your training is so wonderful,” Mycroft said, leaning back against the table, “show me what I’m doing wrong. Wouldn’t want Jim to get bad classes.”

“You’re not… wrong, exactly.” He looked frustrated, “It’s just …”

Mycroft smirked.

“Look, if I show you two how to do this properly, will you stop trying to mix explosives in the kitchen of your flat?”

Mycroft’s smirk got a bit wider. “Sure.”

Which is how Jim and Mycroft ended up with lessons on explosives, out in the countryside.  It was really astonishing how much you could do with household chemicals.

~

Jim was still in a fair amount of pain, some days worse than others, and Mycroft came out one night, when Jim whimpered in his sleep.  Jim woke up sleeping on Mycroft’s chest, with his arm curled around him, like he had been in the car. Jim sighed, curled back into Mycroft’s arms, tucked his head under Mycroft’s chin, and went back to sleep. 


	5. Malice Aforethought

Jim started at King’s College.  It was only part time at first, but it turned out there were things that you had to know, and subjects you had to pass, that had never been covered in his classes, or not yet, so he spent the rest of that school year catching up.

Mycroft touched him more, letting him curl up next to him, as long as he was quiet, or they were talking about something interesting, and he brushed Jim’s hair back sometimes by way of reassurance.

Mycroft got phone calls sometimes, mostly from family.  Jim was allowed to stay in the room if he was quiet.

“What do they think?” Jim asked once, after he hung up with his older brother, whose name was apparently Sherringford.

“Think of what?”

“Me.  I can’t imagine they haven’t noticed.”

“Oh, well, Sherlock, my baby brother, hasn’t, or, if he has, he isn’t saying anything.  He probably hasn’t.” Mycroft shrugged, “Sherringford knows I have some younger fellow living here, he mostly threatened me about the age of consent laws.”

“You hardly touch me.” Jim snorted.

“Whatever,” Mycroft shrugged. “Let people think what they want. Mummy either hasn’t noticed, or doesn’t care, and Daddy is mostly annoyed that I won’t bring you in so he can be disapproving of you,  you being poor, and Irish, and all that.”

Jim nodded.

Mycroft shrugged, “One of my relatives would probably try to snap you up for MI6 or MI5.  I already said, you’re mine… they can find their own, and if they aren’t smart enough to do that, then that’s their tough luck.”

“MI6, that’s…”

“Spy business, mostly.  People blowing things up, or stabbing people. The really important work is politics.  They just carry it out.”

Jim looked thoughtfully at the training gear for Black’s classes.

Mycroft smiled. “Black retired after being injured one too many times. One of my uncles, or cousins, suggested Daddy hire him to teach me.”

“So you can go work for MI6?”

Mycroft laughed, “Work for?  I’m a Holmes, I’d be running it… but who wants to? I’ll leave the aboveboard politics to Sherringford; I plan on taking over from behind the scenes.” Then he shrugged and clearly that was over with. “You need to learn more about psychology, you know.”

“Alright. Why?”

“You’re never going to be big, but you’re fast, and more importantly you’re smart.  You may not be able to take someone down like Black does, but if you can outthink them, that’s half of it.”

Jim looked down, “It never helped in school.”

Mycroft snorted. “Gangs of idiots are always dangerous, but if you can play them off against each other, or get a leash on one, they can be managed. Still, you need to know how to handle them, and a lot of that is knowing how to make them do what you want.”

Mycroft found him more books‑ psychology, sociology, and rhetoric, among other things‑ and Jim despaired of ever keeping up.  He was torn between being happy when Mycroft had to go out of town‑because he had a chance to catch up‑ and being miserable because he missed him.

“Jim,” Mycroft said idly one day, “have any of the other students or teachers tried to lay hands on you?”

“A few have tried, not like before. Why?”

“You’re my Galatea, I don’t want anyone else getting fingerprints on you.”

Jim felt like purring. “I wouldn’t let them, Mycroft.”

“Good.”

“Will… Will you, ever?”

“I suppose,” Mycroft said thoughtfully. “It’s just… “

“Just what?”

“I keep thinking about those other boys with their hands all over you. It makes me want to scrub you.” Mycroft looked dark.

“I can’t do anything about what‑“

Mycroft smiled. “Jim, have you ever considered killing them?”

“Daily,” snorted Jim. “Why?’

“Seriously?”

“Of course, seriously.”

Mycroft  looked at him with utter wicked delight, better than when he’s gotten the explosives. “Let’s.”


	6. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mycroft makes mistakes, Jim has to cover it up, and you hear a bit more about his mother

Mycroft looked up the boys from Jim’s old school, studied their schedules, found out their weaknesses. They cornered the first one on holiday, when he was at an aunt’s house. Mycroft drove them out.

“I hate driving. You’ll have to learn to drive, Jim.” Jim nodded.

With two of them it wasn’t difficult to take him down. Jim marveled at how easy it was, even though he was still smaller. He hadn’t noticed the training making changes, because Black was so much better than he was, but suddenly this nightmare–the boy who’d beaten and raped him–was just a boy, and he broke easily under strikes more deadly than a punch.

Jim really hadn’t thought they would kill him. He’d wondered if Mycroft would bugger him. _But no, of course not: he’d get dirty._

Jim held him down while Mycroft took out a knife, and watched in silent fascination as he took the boy apart like a frog–like a frog in science class.

“Are you going to throw up or anything?” Mycroft asked him, once he came back from wherever he had been in his head.

“No.”

Mycroft smiled at him then, and took a bloody hand and stroked Jim’s cheek. He stared at the blood, then said things Jim didn’t understand at all, but that he assumed were swears.

“We need to shower. I lost control and we got blood all over,” Mycroft said, looking annoyed at his hand, at the blood.

“Won’t his aunt be home soon?”

“Damn, yes she will, and if we kill her too, it will take too long.”

Jim considered, “Do we WANT to kill her? She hadn’t done anything.”

“She let her sister raise THAT.” Mycroft shrugged, “but we don’t have time.” Mycroft grinned at Jim, then. “Right! Practicals, Jim. You only have the chemicals in the house: set it on fire or blow it up. I’ll put some plastic down in my car.”

Jim set everything up as carefully as he could: he was going to make Mycroft proud of him. The house was burning as they drove away. Jim had him stop at a distance. The house exploded and Jim looked at Mycroft’s eyes, and his smile, and hoped.

“That was beautiful, Jim.” Mycroft leaned over and kissed him, then, for the first time: just gently, on the lips, but he kissed him.

They drove to a house Jim had never seen. An older servant came to the car, and Mycroft got out. “Car needs a wash, inside and out,” he said as calmly as if this happened every day. Jim knew it didn’t.

“We’ll use the stable showers.” Mycroft sighed, “Uncle would never forgive me if we tracked blood on the carpets.”

“This is your uncle’s house?”

“One of them,” Mycroft said as they stripped down and showered, in a stable full of horses. “He’s not here right now, which is good. I don’t want him to meet you.”

“Why not?”

“He’d try to take you away from me,” Mycroft said flatly. “Either he’d shoot you or recruit you, but, either way, I don’t share my things.”

It made Jim feel special to hear him say that. Once they’d cleaned up, Jim tried to kiss Mycroft again, but Mycroft stopped him.

“That didn’t go well. It’s a good thing we started there because it was remote, and we could be sloppy, but this wasn’t good enough.”

 _Not even the fire? Not even the explosion? No, of course not, that was covering up for a mistake._ With a shock, Jim realized that it hadn’t been his mistake, but Mycroft’s.

They drove home in silence.

Mycroft signed him up for driving lessons the next day.

A few days after that, Mycroft got a phone call. Jim stayed where Mycroft had left him‑Mycroft hated being followed‑ and watched him in case he needed anything.

“NO, Uncle, I wasn’t hurt. I intended to just defend myself and I killed him.

“Mm hmm” Mycroft frowned, “Alright, fine, yes it’s my pet who was with me; he isn’t involved.”

Mycroft paced, and stopped, and put a pleasantly bland face on, “If you must know, we were jumped for being two boys kissing, and I defended myself.”

He frowned, “YES, Sherringford told me about age of consent laws, we were just kissing.”

Mycroft walked out of the room after that, coming back later annoyed. “Uncle Quentin can be so annoying.”

“Doesn’t your family… err… mind?” Jim asked hesitantly.

“Mostly they mind the scandal.” He shrugged. “As long as I keep the family name tarnish-free they don’t care; besides, with most of my family being homosexual, I doubt anyone is in a position to go on about it.”

“So… it’s not so much that you’re a changeling, as that your whole family is?”

“Whatever are you talking about?”

“My mother said I was a changeling. She said someone stole her baby and replaced him with me,” Jim said quietly. “She said the same thing about my sister, before she tried to kill us all, and then died.”

Mycroft blinked at him a lot. “The records said she committed suicide, and the baby was sick and too young for your father to take care of, but you were older.”

“I was older,” Jim nodded.

“She tried to kill you?”

“She put poison in my porridge, and in the baby bottle, and then she had some kind of row with my father, and then she stabbed herself to death with a knife.” Jim could see it all over again.

“She put poison in your porridge?” Mycroft repeated slowly.

“Yes.”

“Why aren’t you dead then?”

“I remembered the fairy tale: I spooned most of it into a napkin around my throat.” Jim nodded slowly, remembering. “The baby was teething, I think, she didn’t drink much, but they took her away. My mother stabbed herself right in the chest, seven times.” Jim was very far away now: _his mother lying on the floor in the house, blood everywhere; the boy lying on the floor in his house, blood everywhere._ “It’s a magic number, seven.” _A prime number, he knew now._

“Jim?”

“Jim?”

“Jim?”

 _Three. Three was a magic number, too._ “I’m sorry, Mycroft, I didn’t hear you. Can I get you more tea?”

 


	7. Happy Birthday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm so so sorry  
> Really  
> Reminder, mildly unreliable narrator owing to mental health issues. (time sequencing,, for instance)

Mycroft didn’t like Jim talking about “superstitious nonsense like fairies”, so Jim tried to avoid it; as with anything, however, forbidding it made it more interesting. He did most of his reading about fairies in the College library, and with inter-library loans found a lot of truly interesting texts. Fairy rings and myth cycles seemed to be associated with the Moon and Astronomy, and led Jim into researches into obscure astronomical phenomena–which no one questioned.

Mycroft had started noticing when Jim left out milk for the Fae, so he had to stop that–when Mycroft was home, anyway.

He met Mycroft’s Mummy at the university, during one of the times that Mycroft was gone for a month or two. He wondered how you got Mycroft from her, because she was vague and pleasant, and then he asked her about one of the theorems and he was suddenly pulled along in a slipstream of brilliance that made him feel slow and stupid. When he got a copy of the new paper, with a personal note, he didn’t tell Mycroft, because by then he knew that Mycroft would be furious–Jim was his, and he hated anyone else in the family even asking about him.

It took them nearly another year before they went after the next one of the boys, and it was clean and neat and Mycroft kissed him again.

Mycroft let him curl up next to him–as long as he wasn’t a bother; as long as he did well with his studies–but he only kissed him when they killed one of the boys who had touched Jim. They had killed all but the last one, over the years, as he studied mathematics–officially–and psychology–unofficially–and Mycroft demanded perfection and brilliance.

Jim wasn’t surprised when Mycroft was away for his birthday; he never told Jim where he went, or why. He’d hoped he might be there–it was his eighteenth–but he had other things to do and Jim had classes and seminars and tried not to be sad.  When Jim came home a few days after his birthday, Mycroft was standing next to a cake, with eighteen candles on it.

“I missed your birthday,” Mycroft said slowly, but he was smiling.

“You remembered,” Jim smiled up at him, knowing that the cake would be Mycroft’s favorite, because it was an excuse.

“I was getting you a present,” Mycroft said, finally, looking just a bit hesitant, almost– _bashful?_ He held out a newspaper clipping.

Jim took it, confused, and then stared. There had been a fire, someone drinking, passed out, and a cigarette… _His father_. He looked up at Mycroft.

“If he’d died when you were underage, you would have been taken away. He died the day after you turned eighteen.” _And I was here, in class, that whole day._

Jim threw himself into Mycroft’s arms. Mycroft kissed him, and petted his hair, and they eventually had cake.

*

The last one was special: they kidnapped him, and took him someplace where they wouldn’t be disturbed, and Mycroft watched Jim as Jim carved “Never Touch My Things” on him. Jim had worked very hard on his handwriting these past few years, and it looked very nice. It was really a shame to set him on fire after.

They went home, and cleaned up, and Mycroft finally had sex with him, and it was the most horrible, miserable experience of Jim’s life since he’d come to London.

Jim panicked part way through, and told Mycroft to stop–begged him, actually. When he finally finished, Mycroft was furious.

“I’m sorry.” Jim was so crushed.

“You should be!”

“It was just… memories.”

“Well delete them, just like we deleted the people.”

“Yes, Mycroft.”

Mycroft wouldn’t let him in his bed, or kiss him. He lay on the couch and pretended he wasn’t crying.

After a week, Mycroft told him he was sending him to classes over the break.

“Yes, Mycroft.” He kept his head down. “What classes?”

“Sex. One of my relatives knows a place. It will mean getting you all dirty again, but at least they’ll use protection, and you can learn.”

He most emphatically didn’t want anyone else touching him. He flinched. “I only want you.”

Mycroft glared at him, “Except you don’t.”

“I just–“

“You are whatever I want you to be, Jim. You’ll go, and you’ll study, and then, after I get over them having their hands on you, you can show me what you’ve learned.”

Jim briefly thought about killing Mycroft then, but all he said was, “Yes, of course.”

Mycroft softened slightly. And he brushed his hair back for the first time since that day. “Besides, it’s a skill. It’s useful.”

Mycroft let him back in the bed the week before he went away. He lay with his head on Mycroft’s chest and tried to convince himself it wouldn’t be that bad.

It wasn’t.

It was worse.

The PLACE looked like a beautiful estate, and it was extremely discreet. Half of the people here were owned in all but name, and they had been told only that he belonged to one of their clients and was to be instructed in as much as possible. They had been ordered not to leave permanent marks, and that was apparently all. They demanded to touch him, and that he touch them. They made him respond, and treated him as if he was just a body for someone to use.

Jim would always wonder how much Mycroft knew: whether he had come here, or only heard of it; whether he understood. He didn’t think he did understand–after all, Mycroft wanted his mind.

In the end, the battle between his need to please Mycroft–to obey him, to make him proud of him–and his desire to destroy every breathing thing in the building, finally came down on the side of killing.

They apparently expected it.

They took him down and redoubled their demands for obedience, for compliance, for participation.

In the end, he retreated to the one place they couldn’t follow.

He watched distantly as they tried to make him respond. He was vaguely amused that they thought pain would reach him: the pleasure was what had driven him, finally, to break.

In desperation, they tried drugs. From a distant corner of his mind, he curled his lip at some, and made note of others. The… things… that appeared in his mind palace under some of them were intriguing.

Eventually they called his owner.

A part of Jim listened to the fools saying something about Mycroft coming to ‘make a decision’ about what to do. They thought it was a decision about him.

Mycroft arrived with someone who had to be a relative–they had too many features in common–but this man was older, old enough to be a grandfather, and he had a face like an angel. Jim could tell: this was someone who had no heart, not even as much as he–or Mycroft–did.

Mycroft tried to speak to him, to bring him out, but Jim had lost the key to the way out somewhere. Jim listened to his demands, and eventually his pleas, but it didn’t really matter.

Eventually they argued, the two Holmeses–and the angel was named Sherlock, like Mycroft’s brother, wasn’t that amusing–and Mycroft picked up his empty shell and took him away.

Jim was placed in a house he didn’t know, that Mycroft apparently owned. It looked like someplace he would stay. Jim supposed it was where he stayed when he was away.

Mycroft brought in nurses and physical therapists. Jim was carefully steered around the garden when the weather was pleasant. Mycroft came and spoke to him, sometimes. He had lectures brought in on record. Once or twice he lay down next to him and tucked Jim’s head under his chin.

Black came. He asked Mycroft what had happened to him, and Mycroft told him some tale with a bit of the truth, and a lot of fable. He never saw Black again.

After a while Mycroft stopped bothering to leave the room when he had phone calls. Apparently his father had died and Sherringford was the head of his house, now. His baby brother, Sherlock, was in and out of trouble with drugs. Mycroft worried about him, and Sherringford wanted him put away, out of sight somewhere.

Jim managed to put together that Mycroft had arranged for the death of the older Sherlock–the relative who had suggested the PLACE he had been sent–the one with the face like an angel.

Then one day… one day Jim went to re-read Lewis Carroll’s work in his mind palace… and found the key.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lewis Carrol was a mathematician
> 
> Myhusbannd is recovering well from surgery but has been having major blood sugar issues, my apologies for delayed postings


	8. Through The Looking Glass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Actions have consequences, Mycroft

Jim turned the key to the door of his mind palace over carefully in his hand. He wasn’t certain he wanted to go back out there–it hurt out there, after all. He stayed inside, but he hung the key on the wall, next to the mirror. It had been a door, once, but now it was a looking glass over a mantle‑ he did so love Carroll.

He didn’t really plan on going back out. He was comfortable here, and he had his books, and his mathematics, and sometimes Mycroft visited him–although he wasn’t sure he cared anymore. It was hearing Mycroft talking about Mummy’s new paper that did it; Mummy’s papers were always brilliant. He just wanted to read it, and he could always come back in…

He waited until Mycroft was away on a trip again.

He waited until the nursemaid left for the evening.

He crawled through the mirror and back into the real world.

Even with the physical therapy he was weak, but you didn’t need to be very strong to read. He did some exercises as he thought about it, and went back inside. There was an error in the paper: it bothered him. He came out the next night and read it again, and looked things up on the computer, and _there was an ERROR in the paper._

He finally wrote a letter to her and put it in the post.

He started exercising whenever he could–since the physical therapy wasn’t enough–and he didn’t think they cleaned his teeth sufficiently, because his mouth always felt fuzzy when he moved back into his body.

Mycroft came home from his trip. On the rare nights he curled up in bed with Jim, Jim stayed on the other side of the glass; he didn’t want to talk to him, but he liked the way Mycroft stroked his hair. If Mycroft was in his own bed, Jim would come out. Sometimes, Jim left a little milk out for the fairies, but only in a small saucer, and only under the bushes where Mycroft never looked.

Mycroft left, and Mycroft came home again.

Eventually, Mummy published the corrected paper; Jim was worried, because he saw that his name was added as a contributor–eventually, Mycroft would read it, and he would know.

As it turned out, something else happened first.

People came in one evening–a lot of them. Two of them came through the window by Jim’s bed–one of them moved like Mr. Black, but he was thinner and paler and it wasn’t him. Only one of them even glanced at him, but his body didn’t move, because Jim was on the other side of the mirror.

They were armed and they dragged the staff, and Mycroft, to the living room. Jim could hear it all from his bed. He walked through the mirror and got up. He walked quietly through the darkened house until he came to the great room.

There was someone who looked like the Angel Holmes, but younger. Mycroft was being held between two men who reminded Jim of Black, but with crueler faces. The younger Angel was lecturing at Mycroft, something about making… _Mycroft?_ …his whore. Jim almost chuckled; he didn’t think even the PLACE could do that. He was alternating between threats and lecturing. Mycroft told him off and got beaten for it.

While they tied Mycroft down to the coffee table and the man raped him Jim watched with half his attention. _They were doing it wrong, really: the PLACE did it better._

Jim had become used to walking, silently, through the house, in the dark. Now he simply moved behind one of the guards, slipped the knife from his belt, and killed him. There was blood everywhere, of course, and he wasn’t completely silent, but it was dark except for the lights by the table; most of the men were watching the rape, and Mycroft had gone from threats to screams, so it didn’t matter.

He picked up the man’s gun–it was an automatic rifle. Everyone was standing–even the young angel was upright and kneeling. Mycroft was tied down to the table. Jim smiled, happily. He set the gun to full auto and raked the bullets across the room, inches over Mycroft.

He changed the magazine and turned on the rest of the lights. He put one shot each into the head of anyone who had moved like Mr. Black. Several of the staff were dead: some of them had been hit by his gunfire; he ignored them.

Mycroft was staring at him in disbelief, or shock. The younger Angel was writhing on the ground behind him, trying to get up.

“Lousy job of it,” Jim said pleasantly. “Have you even been there?” He watched as the young Angel tried to crawl toward a rifle; Jim waited until he had almost reached it, then put a bullet in his shoulder.

“Jim?” Mycroft croaked.

“Not now, Mycroft,” Jim said as he walked over and reached down. He dragged the man back by his ankle, across and around to in front of Mycroft. He was probably screaming, but so were some of the staff, and Jim didn’t care much, anyway.

Jim stood there for a while. The Angel tried to move, and Jim ground his foot into one of the bullet holes in his stomach. Mycroft was trying to talk to him, but Jim was busy thinking.

Eventually Jim took out the knife, and cut the man’s shirt off. His pants were already off, of course. He crouched down and carved “Never Touch Jim’s Things” on him. It wasn’t very good–there were bullet holes in the way–and he wasn’t screaming after the first word.

It was eerily silent. The survivors huddled in the corner were mostly breathing hard and trying to be invisible.

Mycroft finally asked, fairly calmly, even if his voice was rough, “What now, Jim?”

“I really don’t know,” Jim answered, finally. He was turning the key to his mind palace over in his hand, wondering.

“Cut me loose?” Mycroft seemed to understand that ordering him wasn’t the right thing to do.

“Why?”

Mycroft stared at him for a long time. “I need to call someone to get rid of the bodies.”

Jim considered that. He nodded. He reached down and cut Mycroft loose. Mycroft stood up very slowly, painfully.

“You should have gone down on him first, for lubrication,” Jim said, _because really it was rather stupid of him not to have,_ “and relaxed more.”

Mycroft shuddered suddenly and threw up. Jim wondered why.

Mycroft slowly walked to the phone, and called someone. Afterwards he told Jim to put down the gun, so that no one shot him when the response showed up.

“Oh, then I’ll go back to bed,” he said. He went back to bed, ignoring the blood, and lay down and walked back into his mind palace and went to sleep.

Mycroft spoke to him sometimes over the next few days, but Jim was very tired.

Eventually he felt rested enough, and he hadn’t exercised enough, and Mycroft knew he was able to get out anyway. He got up because he smelled the tea. He walked out and Mycroft dropped his tea cup.

Jim went over, as he always had, and fetched Mycroft a cup of tea. Mycroft took it, staring at him as though death himself was handing him a cup of tea–perhaps he was.

“I… Thank you,” Mycroft said finally.

Jim slid into the chair across from Mycroft, and poured his own tea, as he had done for years.

“How are your studies, Mycroft, My Own.”

“I graduated, again. I’m not in school presently.” Mycroft said, warily.

“Oh. That must be dull.”

“Not really. Politics, you know.”

“Oh.”

“I… I didn’t know. They were only supposed to instruct you.”

“I learned a lot.” Jim smiled at him; for some reason, Mycroft’s hand shook.

“Will you stay?”

“I’m not your plaything, Mycroft.”

“No. No, you aren’t. I’m sorry.”

Jim stood up. “It’s time for my walk around the garden. Perhaps after I’ve forgotten about his hands being all over you, we can try again.”

Mycroft shuddered.

“Just delete it,” Jim said, and walked out into the flowers. He left a bowl of milk out for the fairies that night.

Mycroft didn’t say a word.

 


	9. The Twice-Born Boy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The end of the beginning.

The Jim that came back wasn’t the Jim who had left–not exactly. He smiled too broadly sometimes, and his smiles had edges. He watched the world with eyes that flickered and changed and seemed to be looking somewhere else.

“I want to study drugs,” he said idly to Mycroft not many days later–although he’d stopped counting days–as he lay on Mycroft’s chest and tucked his head under his chin.

Mycroft hadn’t learned not to ask, and asked him why.

“Because the ones they tried to bring me out, to where they could get me again, in the PLACE… were so interesting, really. I want to understand how they work,” Jim said idly.

“They tried drugs?”

“Oh, yes, before they called you.”

“Did… did they hurt?”

“Hurt?” He looked up at Mycroft and laughed, then, for the first time since he’d come back. “Nothing could hurt me, Mycroft: not anymore; not then.” He smiled up at Mycroft, upside down, and Mycroft shivered.

Mycroft paid for him to go to school again, this time for pharmacology and the mind.

Jim asked one day where Mr. Black was–why he hadn’t visited again–and found out he’d died in the assassination of Mycroft’s father. That hurt, somehow: a distant ache. He found out where he was buried: in a corner of a cemetery for agents and those who served their country, and had no one but Crown and Country for family. He went sometimes and talked to him.

“He was a Double-O briefly,” Mycroft said to him one afternoon after he’d been to visit him.

“What’s that?”

“MI6’s best killers. He got captured, and they hurt him too badly to keep working, so he retired and my father got him. He couldn’t save my father, but he died bringing down the killers.”

Jim nodded.

Months went by: Mycroft healed, and wouldn’t speak about it; Jim slowly started smiling in ways that people didn’t back away from, but his moods were mercurial.

Mycroft was arguing more and more with his brother Sherringford about Sherlock–his brother, not the Angel without a soul. Jim listened to Mycroft on the phone about his brother, and thought… When Mycroft hung up, Jim asked him, “Is he named after the Angel, then?”

“What?”

“The man that came with you to the PLACE, the older one. The one who raped you was younger.” Jim was lying on the sofa, staring at the ceiling. _The Fibonacci sequence was everywhere and spirals formed in paint droplets and flower petals like the garden in Wonderland._ Mycroft flinched.

His voice somewhat rough, Mycroft nodded, “A cousin. We call the older ones Uncle, but he was a cousin. Sherlock wasn’t named for him, it’s a family name–they were both named after an ancestor–and Sherlock isn’t my brother’s first name, anyway.”

“He’s back on drugs again?”

“Yes.”

“He’s probably trying to self-medicate. You won’t get him off them until you solve the problem he’s running away from.”

Mycroft sighed, “I know. It’s a common problem, in my family. Mummy found her mathematics; Albert found hunting; Sherringford, politics; but otherwise…”

Jim nodded, thinking, and then his moods shifted and he went on with something else.

A few days after that, Jim said, calmly, during dinner, “I think I’m not as jealous as you are, Mycroft. Or perhaps it’s the fact that I already killed him? In any event, we can try again.”

Mycroft flinched. “I wouldn’t think you would want to.”

Jim shrugged, “I just wonder what it would feel like, if it would be different.”

They tried that night. Mycroft couldn’t, at first. Jim slipped to his knees as he’d been taught and made him hard. Jim led him to the bed and coaxed him with the skills he’d learned. Mycroft fucked him, calling him perfect and beautiful and dark. Mycroft was really awful in bed–unskilled–but he had passion, and anger, and a certain drive to possess, and control.

Jim could work with it.

Slowly, he did. Mycroft learned to be more precise, to temper his aggression just enough to make it last, and to touch Jim in return. Jim could take him to pieces with his tongue, or his words. It was no surprise that Mycroft liked blood: he’d suspected that before.

It was different.

It was control, even on his knees, even under him, it was control… and that made so much difference…

“My Own?” Jim smiled with his too-wide smile–the one he hid so well most of the time, now–after Mycroft came home one day. “Is the PLACE still there?”

“What?” Mycroft looked at him and fidgeted, “Oh, that… Yes, I suppose it is. My cousin was one of the sponsors, but not the only one.”

“I’ve been doing well in my studies, and you’ve been working hard. Why don’t we take a vacation?”

“You… You want to GO there?” Mycroft stared at him.

 Jim laughed as he realized what Mycroft thought. Jim was no longer as readable to him as he had been, whether from age or his experiences. “No, but I did promise to kill a few people, before I had to leave.”

“Oh.” Mycroft nodded, “I hadn’t thought about it. They… They weren’t as important as my Uncle.”

“No, they aren’t important, but it would be nice…”

They killed the first one together, like old times. Mycroft barely managed to clean the blood off of himself before he had Jim down on the floor: blood and violence; possession and sex.

Jim wanted the second one in private, and he took his time. He came back with a bitten lip, and whispered, “Yours, Mycroft, and you’re mine.” And they lay on the bed, tangled up together, and Mycroft tasted Jim’s blood in his mouth for days when they kissed.

Mycroft never asked how many of them there were, or if Jim killed them all, or if it was only a few, but Jim came home some days with his eyes gleaming. Sometimes he wanted sex, and sometimes just to curl up in Mycroft’s arms while Mycroft stroked his hair.

*

They had two years of something like contentment: Jim studying and sometimes experimenting on people before he killed them–for his own reasons or for Mycroft. Mycroft had fewer people he wanted dead as time went on, and Jim started to wonder if Mycroft was drawing away from him. He asked him sometimes, but all he found out was that his Mummy was seeing another man–which Jim had suspected–and Sherlock was in trouble again, and Sherringford wasn’t managing things well.

Eventually, Mycroft mentioned his mother going to the opera, and how much Mycroft hated to go, but she wouldn’t go alone.

Jim smiled quietly, and wrote her a letter. She was delighted to see him again. They went to the opera together one day, when Mycroft was off, busy with politics or what have you. It was surprisingly good.

“Music is mathematics brought to sound,” Mummy Holmes said dreamily, after, “and theater and opera are the mind, simplified.”

Jim thought about the mind, and music, and all the psychology and pharmacology he was studying, and nodded, “Yes. Yes, it is. I don’t see how I missed it.”

He corresponded with her on music and mathematics, and studied how words and sounds shape thoughts. There turned out to be quite a bit written on it already, if not in the direction he had been going. It was useful, yet another tool to re-shape the world into what he wanted.

Jim learned to hide his Cheshire smile and his Mirrorland eyes and direct people’s attention with pitch, and choice of word. He could fade from view, even without the drugs, or dazzle and draw the eye, as he chose. It was useful to be able to vanish in a café, or on the street, without leaving even his smile to remember him by. It was terrifying when he chose to reveal himself, shattering their reality with a glimpse of what lay behind the mirror.

Then, just before his Twenty Second birthday, Sherringford was killed in a bombing. The country convulsed, and Mycroft vanished for months. Jim could recognize his hand in settling some of it.

A few months after his birthday–which Jim had spent alone with his mathematics and his studies–Mycroft asked to meet with him. They met out away, in a place that looked like picnics. Mycroft’s guards stayed by the car, and he met Jim under a tree.

“I have to leave you,” Mycroft said. He was standing stiffly, his hands flexing on his umbrella as though he ached to draw the blade.

Jim didn’t understand at first. “For how long this time? Do you know?”

“No, Jim. This is the end. I’m the eldest now, and I have to do my duty. I couldn’t do that with you. You’d always be too much of a temptation.”

“What? You can’t…”

“I left you enough money to finish your studies and get set up somewhere. The lease on your flat is paid through the end of next year. I can’t… I can’t see you again.”

It wasn’t until Mycroft was closing the door of the car that Jim started to believe it.

All of the phone numbers were disconnected. The sound echoed in Jim’s ears long after he stopped trying to call.

He moved through his life on automatic for a month, waiting for the assassin, the bullet, the bomb. He didn’t try to stop it. He waited, and his life was grey, and cold, and nothing mattered.

It wasn’t until three months later that he realized that Mycroft intended to leave him alive. That he didn’t even care enough about him to kill him. That he thought Jim couldn’t–wouldn’t–have vengeance for broken bargains and broken dreams. When Jim stopped sobbing, crying for the first time in so many years, he swore that Mycroft would regret that.

The world bled color from behind the mirror: deep crimson and forest green and poisonous blue.

James Moriarty smiled his too-sharp smile, and hid his eyes behind mirrored glasses. “Every fairy tale needs a good old-fashioned villain, Mycroft, but it doesn’t need two…”

He put a bowl of cream out for the fairies and slipped into the dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As stated, this takes place many years PRE season One of the BBC show.  
> Jim blames Sherlock to some extent for Mycroft leaving him, he knows Mycroft cares about Sherlock, Sherlock is in fact the one who noticed Carl Power's murder and started all this...  
> and hopefully you can understand why Jim was so very very unstable, and why Mycroft didn't tell Sherlock much.
> 
> by the time you get to Smooth Criminal, Jim has finished with Sherlock, gotten a fair amount of hate out of his system, and spent over 15 years recovering... but he has by no means repaid Mycroft for what he did (and the added insult of interrogation)
> 
> go back and look at the interaction between Mycroft and Jim - how they talk about each other, what they say... that Mycroft (at the end of Smooth Criminal) admits that JIM ca be trusted to keep his word... and doesn't argue Jim's statement that Mycroft will only keep the bargain because Sherlock is a hostage....
> 
> and Mycroft gets jealous because Jim looks at Bond, the way he used to look at Mycroft...
> 
> "Pressure" picks up right after "We could be heroes"


End file.
